Flowers

We’ve been visiting our favorite places in London recently and wanted to share some of them with you. If you’ve been reading AT for a while you know I’ve been a big fan of Petersham Nursery for years, a nursery/restaurant/antique shop just outside London. What heaven – all of my favorite things in one place! They’ve now opened a store in Covent Garden – and two restaurants. It’s all wonderful, but my heart belongs to the original location in Richmond, […]

Tulips are an incredibly versatile flower. They can be as simple as you please, plunked into an old bottle or yogurt jar, or they can be the swans of the flower world, long-necked and elegant, turning toward the sun each morning from inside a gilded vase. I bought a few kinds of tulips and offer them here for your consideration. (And I couldn’t resist the Lenten roses and hyacinths for good measure.) Part of being happy is knowing how to […]

Falalalala-la-la-la-lahhhhhh! It may feel like April but Christmas is just around the corner, and have you ever seen it come up so quickly? It seems like I was just starting to think about pumpkins and cornstalks and it’s already time for wreaths and candles in the window. The Christmas wreath pictured above came about because there wasn’t time to buy a new one. I took the bittersweet off the Thanksgiving grapevine wreath and added dried hydrangea, a few greens from […]

I have many happy memories from growing up on a grape farm. Every fall when the grapes were ripe, I would race out to the vineyards after school. The weather was still sunny, but you could feel autumn coming in the crisp breeze that rustled the milkweed and wild sumac. My mother and aunts would be picking grapes, methodically working their way down the rows, clipping bunches and dropping them into old wooden beer crates. They pulled the crates along […]

RICH REDS I’ve made more than my share of red, white, and blue centerpieces for patriotic-themed parties, and it’s not an easy combination. Blue flowers are rare, and forcing those three colors into one arrangement can give some pretty garish results. It’s better to combine reds and whites in a bouquet and bring in the blue with a tablecloth or placemats to create a more natural Fourth of July look. The greens provide a neutral backdrop and a more casual […]